Unholy War by David Hair

a bit of food and water in normal times, but these weren’t normal times. Alaron might not have understood the words but from the tone of Ramita’s voice as she argued it was clear she was a tough bargainer.
    The women produced dried chickpeas, lentils and curry leaves while Alaron pumped brackish water from the well, far more than they needed, and Ramita used Water-gnosis to purify it all, so that the villagers would have some more useful gain from the transaction.
    ‘Tell no one we were here,’ Ramita told them.
    Fat chance
, Alaron thought, looking at the wide-eyed wonder and dread on the faces surrounding them.
    Alaron managed to get her back to the skiff and airborne before she hunched over, wracked by another bout of internal cramping. She wasn’t due for another month, but apparently she had entered the period where over-exertion might trigger early labour. He spotted a dried-up riverbed with high banks that offered some shade and pointed the skiff towards it.
    Once they’d landed he covered the skiff with the dun-coloured canvas sails, then gathered enough wood for Ramita to cook the lentils. It was plain fare, but it tasted like a feast after two days with no more than a few sips of water.
    They resolved to fly only at night now – the Inquisitors would likely repair their windship quickly and the Dokken were shapechangers, so also capable of flight – and their pursuers would soon be hot on their tail. Before they bedded down, he scanned the expanse of brown around them and the dome of clear blue overhead. High-circling vultures were the only signs of life in all the world. Alaron’s last conscious thought was that one of them needed to stay alert.
    *
    Ramita woke to find Alaron sound asleep, slumped over like a corpse on the ground beside her. She studied his face: rather naïve and earnest when awake, childlike in repose. It was a pleasing face, she decided, despite his pallor – no wonder the Keshi called white people ‘slugskins’! Even his hair was fair: a light reddish-brown colour, flecked with gold – she’d never known people whose hair was not jet-black until Antonin Meiros brought her north. She wondered how many other strange things there were in the world, and then,
Will I live to see them?
    As if aware of her scrutiny, Alaron blinked awake and immediately clutched at the cylinder in his belt.
He looks so young to be bearing such a responsibility as this ‘Scytale’
, she thought as he rubbed his eyes and visibly collected himself.
He doesn’t know what to do – and neither do I.
    She had asked the Goddess for a sign, but there had been none.
Parvasi-ji
, she prayed quickly,
don’t forget me, please.
She tipped a little water away as an offering.
    ‘This is so alien,’ Alaron said eventually, looking around. ‘I’ve seen a lot of the world this year, but this place – just look at it! It goes on for ever but it’s a wasteland – there’s nothing out here. What do people eat?’
    ‘This is desert,’ Ramita replied, ‘but all around Hebusalim there are wheat fields. And there are slave mines in the mountains to the east. Hebusalim trades with the east and the south. Trade is the blood in the veins of the world, my father always says.’
    Alaron crinkled his brow. ‘My da once met a Lakh man; he told him the same words.’
    ‘Really? When did your father meet a man from Lakh?’
    Alaron looked at her and smiled awkwardly. ‘I hadn’t wanted to mention it. Before he became a trader, my father was a soldier. This was in the First Crusade, you see. Da had no quarrel with the Dhassans, but they had to follow orders.’
    Ramita felt her heart flutter. Her father’s voice echoed inside her head:
Orders, the Rondian captain told me. They did it because of orders.
‘Your last name,’ she asked, her voice trembling a little, ‘what is it again, please? And your father’s name?’
    ‘Mercer. Vann Mercer.’
    Her hand went to her mouth as a strange feeling enveloped her. She